I think stupidity in business is really an interesting thing. What winds up happening is a disconnect between your company's strategic management and then your more applied on-the-street management. I guarantee with you that the board of directors of most companies has no idea what the costs of hiring people really is in the HR department.

An online job search seems cheaper. But what HR is doing is turning away valuable candidates. They're experiencing false negatives. That means the right person applies for the job electronically but the algorithm kicks them out so they lose that individual.

When you're not recruiting effectively you're not recruiting properly through a certain channel, like a job board, then what's left of you? I don't believe HR's been able to figure that out. They need to go back to the way they used to do it. They complained that they got so many millions of applicants, they couldn't possibly spend the amount of human time on all those applicants. But they could solve the problem tomorrow if they stopped soliciting millions of applicants through job boards.

I really think you cannot separate the money from the age. When employers discriminate over age, they're also discriminating over money. Older workers tend to make more money, especially the higher up you go, and companies don't want to spend the money. They want to spend less.

I really don't think that an older worker can stop age discrimination, but you can successfully distract the employer from that issue if you focus on the reason they really want to hire you and that can make you more successful. It's up to you to demonstrate that.

The most successful people are those who are wildly enthusiastic about their work.

Remember, the word "discrimination" isn't always pejorative. When an employer discriminates because an older worker lacks certain kinds of skills that are important in the market today, then it's almost a legitimate form of discrimination because the employer is just trying to figure out who can actually get the job done.